A thousand and one days

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A thousand and one days or hezār-o-yek rūz (هزار و يك روز), is an extensive collection of Persian tales brought to Europe by the orientalist François Pétis de la Croix and compiled on the model of the Arabian Nights . The stories from the Thousand and One Days did not achieve nearly the same popularity in Europe as the famous model and are little known today.

History of origin

François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713) allegedly received the collection from his Persian friend from Isfahan , a dervish named Mokles , who had written it down. Mokles himself had taken the Indian comedy collection Al farag ba'dasch-schidda (The joy after sorrow) as a model and converted the stories it contained into Persian tales. When Pétis de la Croix got to read the collection, he was so enthusiastic about it that around 1675 he asked Mokles to lend him the manuscript. At the same time he was given permission to copy the text.

Upon his return to Paris, Pétis de la Croix began translating the manuscript, considering only about a quarter of the collection valuable enough to be published. This collection should appear under the title Les mille et un jours . Because Pétis de la Croix had spent a large part of his life in Persia , he was no longer entirely sure of his mother tongue and passed his translation on to Alain-René Lesage for another review . However, the resulting editing was so thorough that, as it was later recognized, a completely new work was created in places. It was found, for example, that hundreds of days were often skipped between the individual stories. The translators justified themselves by saying that they had left out those stories that reported “only more or less foolish miracles of Mohammed ” or whose action was so “indecent” that they could not be expected of an average European reader.

Many of the stories were structured in such a way that their dramatic structure could be used by European authors as suggestions for their own works, which was all the easier since the Indian original had also been compiled from templates from various authors.

The first French edition in print finally appeared in 5 volumes from 1710 to 1712 .

Frame narration

As was the case with the Arabian Nights , the collection of One Thousand and One Days is integrated into a framework story. It tells the story of Princess Farrukhnaz, the beautiful daughter of King Togrul-Bei from Kashmir. The plot begins with the princess having a dream in which she sees a deer caught in a noose. A hind appearing shortly afterwards can free him, but in the process gets caught in the noose herself. Instead of helping her, as she did, the deer leaves her to her fate. After awakening, Farrukhnaz is firmly convinced that the god Kesaja sent her the dream to warn her of the general infidelity of men. From then on she refuses to even listen to the marriage proposals addressed to her by the most powerful princes. Her father, who thinks she has become haughty, looks at her with growing concern. He fears that the offended princes might seek revenge and bring bad luck to his kingdom. Thereupon he instructs the faithful nurse Sutlemema to do everything possible to bring the princess back to her senses. The nurse tries to do this with a series of narratives that are supposed to provide ever better and more striking evidence of the loyalty of men. In the end, the princess is converted, but that's not because of the stories. The exact reason is not entirely clear, however, as Pétis de la Croix only took over the framework story in fragments and only a few, strongly fragmentary copies of the Persian original are available.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Ernst: Afterword . In: A thousand and one days. Oriental stories. Second volume. Insel-Verlag Leipzig 1967, pages 733-736, here p. 733.
  2. ^ Paul Ernst: Afterword . In: A thousand and one days. Leipzig 1967, pp. 733-734.
  3. ↑ See Paul Ernst: Afterword . In: A thousand and one days. Leipzig 1967, pp. 734-736.
  4. ^ Paul Ernst: Afterword . In: A thousand and one days. Leipzig 1967, p. 733; Catalog entry in the French National Library
  5. ↑ See also: Paul Ernst: Afterword . In: A thousand and one days. Oriental stories. Second volume. Insel-Verlag Leipzig 1967, p. 736.